


Come As You Are

by ELG



Category: Without a Trace
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-05
Updated: 2013-04-05
Packaged: 2017-12-07 14:11:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/749410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ELG/pseuds/ELG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny and Martin’s pillow talk.</p>
<p>WARNING: Extremely soppy</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come As You Are

Danny has always been gentle with him – from the first terrifying date to the comfortable midday make out session on a lazy Sunday afternoon. The gentleness dumbfounded him, at first – upsetting prejudices about pain and sweat and taking it like a man – but Danny always treated him as if he were made of spun glass. A few times, in the early days, Martin tried to protest that whatever Danny was seeing, he was in pretty good shape, he worked out, he ran, he could take care of himself; take what was coming to him in whatever form Danny liked to dish it out. Privately, he was thinking of it like a test he was going to have to pass; something painful but necessary. But Danny just shook his head and went back to kissing a featherlight trail down his spine while Martin lay there, drying sweat pooling in the small of his back from when Danny had rubbed up against him earlier and things had got so very hot and pleasurable, still a little nervous and confused and wondering when it was going to start getting rough and dangerous with no women around to make the case for being gentle. 

“This isn’t about muscle memory and workouts at the gym, Martin.” Danny kissed him some more, tongue warm and inventive as it touched him, made him shiver because it felt so good. “This is about who you really are. What you really are.”

“Who am I then?” Martin whispered over his shoulder. “What am I?”

“Sensitive.” Another kiss. “Breakable.”

There was a breathless silence in the darkness as Martin almost swore he could hear both their hearts beating as one; a sudden rush of painful longing, a feeling towards Danny that he had been trying so hard to deny. Because it was less complicated if it was just lust and Danny wanted him, and Martin wanted back, and he was curious, and it was a guy thing, like a frat initiation; another way Danny was breaking in the new guy so that Martin would be a better fit for the team. But this wasn’t that; this was being seen for who he really was with such painful clarity that he had never felt more naked. Because he was both of those things; his fragility, both physical and emotional, something of which he had been ashamed right up until this moment when Danny had made it seem precious. 

“I’m not going to hurt you.” Danny sounded almost conversational but there was that husky warmth to his voice, and Martin just knew, even though the room was dark at his insistence, that his eyes would be so gentle now that if Martin had been able to see them, he would have been completely lost. 

Martin found his throat was dry and his eyes unexpectedly wet. “I know,” he said, realizing as he said the words aloud that he had always known it, after all. “I think that’s why I’m here.”

Danny stroked a hand through his hair gently, tilting his head so that their lips could meet while he ran warm skilful fingers up and down Martin’s ribcage. He said: “I like you as you are.” 

He kissed well, lips inviting, tongue caressing, none of the plundering that Martin had known in the past. There was apparently something about him that made impatient women want to shove him into storage closets and thrust their tongues down his throat deep enough to taste his breakfast. He was reactive, he knew that; people were always telling him he didn’t make things happen, he just reacted when they did; he didn’t exactly know how to court a woman, which was ludicrous at his age, and with the amount of experience he had; but they tended to make the running and he just had to be receptive. Most of his early romances had come about at the weddings of cousins who had taken him along, dressed him nicely, then pushed him at the most carnivorous single girls. Martin had always been happy to let them take charge, as they were usually far more imaginative than he was when it came to interesting things to do in the bedroom anyway. He had never seen anything unmanly or dishonorable in allowing himself to be preyed upon by beautiful women. Only from time to time did he wonder if he ought, perhaps, to try to have more of a say in whom he dated and for how long.

“I like you, too,” Martin whispered tentatively. It still seemed a little foolish to be whispering tender things in the dark to Danny Taylor, who teased him and ate his lunch, and mocked his ties; except that in-the-dark-Danny was subtly and movingly different from the Danny of daylight hours, and yet almost unbearably the same. 

“No.” Danny stroked fingers through Martin’s hair, leaning close enough that they could see in the dim silvery moonlight making its way between the drapes. “I like you as you are. Exactly as you are.”

Martin almost gasped because of course that was impossible. No one could possibly like him as he was, especially given that Danny knew better than anyone – 

“All your faults, yes.” He saw that long handsome face crinkle into a smile that was only a little mocking, brown eyes tender and intent. “I know you’re an uptight, judgmental WASP with a stick up his ass and a Daddy complex to rival Oedipus, Martin. I like that you’re like that because being like that is part of what makes you – you and I like you…” He left a space for Martin to finish.

“As I am.”

“Exactly as you are.”

Martin swallowed hard, because it was too much as declarations went, it was likely to make his heart expand so far his chest couldn’t contain it. “Well, I don’t like you exactly the way you are.”

Danny just smiled and he wondered how it felt to be that confident, to know that, of course, everyone who knew him wouldn’t want to change a thing lest it take away some of his essential…Dannyness. “I challenge you to name a single fault that I possess.”

“Your hairstyle,” Martin countered.

“The envy of the free world.”

“Also, your ears.”

“Also perfect.”

“And you mock people who are unused to mockery.”

“Because it’s good for them.”

“And disconcert them by invading their personal space.”

“Also good for them.”

“And…”

“And…?” That was definitely mockery in Danny’s eyes now.

Martin conceded defeat. “And I like you just the way you are, too.”

A smile, no, a shit-eating grin. “I know you do, Martin. And it’s okay.”

Martin sighed. “It really isn’t.”

Danny lent in close and kissed him with unbearable tenderness, one hand just caressing Martin’s hair, his mouth brushing against his, letting him know this was the way it was always going to be, this reverent, this gentle, this full of love. “Trust me, it really is.”

##### The End


End file.
